Cesar Chavez died on April 23, 1993. Thirty-one years to the day later, Gov. Janet Mills killed two bills that would have improved the lives of farmworkers in Maine, the people who put the food on our tables, the people who Chavez fought for his entire life. He was ultimately awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 for his heroic efforts.

The significance of the dates is not lost on me. Maine’s governor chose the anniversary of his death to veto L.D. 2273, the governor’s own bill, and the product of a committee she created because she claimed to believe that farmworkers deserve a fair wage. Mills’ veto demonstrates otherwise. L.D. 2273 would have guaranteed that farmworkers finally be paid at least the same minimum wage as every other working person in Maine. Our governor also vetoed L.D. 525, which simply would have allowed farmworkers to talk to one another and their employers about their working conditions without the fear of being fired. Both bills had been enacted by a majority of the members of the Maine House and the Maine Senate.

This marks the fourth time in a span of 27 months that Maine’s governor has vetoed bills that would have improved the lives of the people who help feed us; the fourth time that Mills has told farmworkers, with her actions, I don’t see you and I don’t care about you.

In doing so, she carries on the systemic and institutional racism that was born in slavery, has been embedded in state and federal law for centuries, and has been a stain on our country’s history for even longer. Maine’s farmworkers need to know that many Maine people, including a majority of those elected to the Maine House and Senate, do see you and do care about you. Sadly, a stroke of the veto pen wielded by one person thwarted the wishes of the many and continues the treatment of farmworkers as less than, and as second-class workers who do not deserve the basic labor law rights and remedies that every other working person in Maine takes for granted.

For anyone who doubts that racism has prevented farmworkers from being protected under state and federal labor law, consider the following.

The two primary jobs forced upon enslaved humans in our country were domestic work and farm work. The two occupations that were deliberately excluded from the protections of New Deal legislation that created the federal minimum wage and labor organizing right were domestic workers and farmworkers. Here is just a sample of the testimony in the United States Congress to support the exclusion of farmworkers and domestic workers. Florida Representative James Mark Wilcox explained: “[t]here has always been a difference in the wage scale of white and colored labor. So long [as the states] are permitted to handle the matter, the delicate and perplexing problem can be adjusted; but the federal government knows no color line and of necessity it cannot make any distinction between races. … Now such a plan might work in some sections of the United States, but those of us who know the true situation know that it just will not work in the South. You cannot put the Negro and the white man on the same basis and get away with it.”

Sadly, the representative’s words proved prophetic, although he was wrong that his beliefs were only held in the South. He was right that if you leave it to the states, you can continue the structural and systemic racism. Maine’s Legislature chose to do better and correct historical inequities. Gov. Mills failed us in the fight for what is right, just and moral. The fight is not over, but it appears it will not be won under this administration. As Cesar Chavez said, si se puede, yes we can – and we will.

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